I looked at the metal bell on the counter that said, ‘Ring for service.’
Then pressed it.
Only once. Even though, after an entire minute, nobody came.
I looked back at the man that was directly behind me and saw that more people had arrived since I’d come in.
I bit my lip and found Hoax grinning at me.
Hoax worked for my father and was also married to Pru. Pru and her sisters, Phoebe and Piper, had all grown up on the Free compound. My father and five of his buddies had formed a compound of sorts when they’d gotten out of the military. As each man had expanded his family, they’d all built houses on the same plot of land.
Hence how the compound had formed.
Though I hadn’t seen Hoax other than at the compound, he still seemed approachable.
Technically, I suppose, I should’ve known Bayou a little better, too, seeing as he was married to Phoebe now.
But, he never came to visit at the same time that I did, and we’d been able to avoid each other quite successfully—not because we were actively avoiding each other but because we both led separate lives that kept us busy. Busy enough that when I was around, he wasn’t. And when he was, I was busy.
I’d been invited to a few dinners that they were all a part of, but being the new man on the totem pole at work meant that I worked nights for now. It also meant that when everybody else was awake, I wasn’t, and vice versa.
I hadn’t quite figured out how to manage my time on my days off, either.
Here it was well past two in the afternoon, and I was just getting my day started.
Anyway, excuses aside, I should’ve likely met Bayou before now.
I should’ve also made an attempt to be around my family more, too.
But I hadn’t seen that problem until lately.
Lately when Slate came in the picture.
“Should I ring the bell again?” I asked Hoax.
Hoax shrugged.
“I guess,” he muttered.
I rang the bell again, this time tapping it twice.
Slate’s voice carried loudly out of the kitchen.
“I’m fuckin’ coming.”
Slate finally came out of the back room with a tray of what looked to be blueberry muffins, and my mouth watered.
For two reasons.
A, of course, the muffins.
B, because the way he was holding the tray put his forearms on display, and made his biceps look huge.
“Umm, do you need help?” I gestured to all of the people that were now in line.
He rolled his eyes. “No. Been doing this since I was a kid and old enough to count money.”
I tried not to be offended by the roll of his eyes that clearly said, ‘you’re joking, right?’
“Then possibly you could take my order sometime this week?” I shot back, unable to control my simmering anger.
Slate placed the muffins—which were, in fact, blueberry—into the display case and turned to me.
“Yes,” he replied silkily. “What do you want?”
I rolled my eyes. Could I get away with saying ‘one of everything?’
“Umm, give me twelve of those blueberry muffins. Twelve of those cinnamon twist things.” I paused. “A dozen of those cookies right there,” I pointed. “And a glass of milk.”
“We don’t sell milk,” he informed me.
My brow rose. “But you had milk the last time I was in here.”
“I’m also the grandson of the owner,” he shot back.
He did have a point.
“All right,” I said softly. “Then that’s it.”
Slate got the delicacies in record time, and he was right.
He did look like he was fully competent.
By the time he had me all rung up and I was handing him my card, he was staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You gonna eat any of those cinnamon twists now?” he questioned.
I thought about that, then shrugged.
“Maybe,” I volunteered.
“If you do, I suggest you warm it up. They’re way better,” he offered.
“Just one,” I said. “You can warm it up while I take these out to the car.”
He opened the box up, took a sheet out of the box that he used to grab all my food with, then plucked another cinnamon twist out of the case and popped it in the microwave. Once that was done, he gestured at the man that was behind me.
Hoax.
“Hey, would you mind taking this to her car? I’m not sure if she can lift it,” Slate teased.
My mouth dropped open.
“Hey.” I lifted my arm up and showed him my impressive muscles. “I have guns. See?”
Okay, so they were pretty pitiful. But they weren’t anything to sneeze at, either.
I did CrossFit.
I ran.
I also was still five foot nothing.
I didn’t look like I could lift a flea.
“Sure,” Hoax shouldered up to the counter and grabbed my boxes of shit, then started back out without another word. I hurriedly followed behind him and got the front door, holding it open for him to exit.
He walked directly to my car without me having to point it out to him, and I wondered if there was something about it that screamed ‘that’s Harleigh’s.’
I didn’t ask him, though.
Instead, I hurried to catch up and opened the front door for him.
He placed it on my seat and closed the door.
“You come here a lot?” he asked as we walked back to the bakery.
I shrugged. “It’s the best bakery in town besides the one over by the old mental institution. But the owners of that one relocated to Arizona after a freak tornado a few months ago, so it’s this place or nothing. Not that I’m complaining.”
He grunted out a wordless reply and opened the bakery’s door for me, allowing me to move ahead of him back up to the counter.
The line had grown to about five people, if you didn’t count the entire group of bikers.
And I smiled at a few as I rushed up to the front to get my card and my twist.
When I arrived, it was to find Slate once again returning from the back, this time with a cup of milk in his hand.
I felt something inside me warm at the gesture.
Then he had to go and ruin it.
“Thank you!” I gasped, excited.
Slate rolled his eyes.
“Whatever,” he muttered. “Just didn’t want to hear you bitching the next time I saw you. Which seems to be the only fuckin’ thing you do.”
I gasped.
“You really shouldn’t be dropping the F-bomb in front of your grandmother,” I murmured. “She doesn’t look like she likes it when you do that.”
Slate looked over his shoulder at his grandmother and grinned.
I felt that grin in my soul…if my vagina could be considered my soul.
Because holy shit, was the man’s smile potent.
“I really shouldn’t be giving away any of her milk, either,” he pointed out. “Yet you saw me do that, didn’t you?”
With that, he gestured toward the large man behind me, and I skittered sideways and hurried out of the door.
And when I took my first bite of the cinnamon twist and moaned, I tempted a look at him over my shoulder.
He was staring at me.
I gave him a thumb’s up with the cup of milk he’d given me, and his lips twitched.
I walked out of the bakery with my insides shivering.
I also told myself that I wasn’t going to stay at my father’s place until he got there.
I wouldn’t.
***
I did.
Three hours later, I was sitting in the compound, on my father’s porch, acting like I was there for a nice chat with my mom and dad when in fact I was there because I wanted another glimpse of him.
“How was work yesterday?” my mother asked, startling me out of my contemplation o
f the driveway.
I looked over at her and smiled.
“It was okay,” I admitted. “Though, there are a lot of staff out with the flu right now. If I make it through this flu season without it, it’ll be a miracle.”
Dad grunted on his chair beside me and stood up, walking inside without a word.
“What?” I asked my mom.
“His knee is bothering him again. Probably have a storm coming in…so he says.”
My lips twitched.
My father had sustained quite a bit of damage in his time as a soldier. The scarring all over his body was enough to prove it.
When the weather took a drastic change, it was more than likely his body would start aching to let him know it was coming. Sometimes, he said, he would know the forecast better than the weatherman.
“I heard there’s a cold front blowing through tomorrow afternoon,” I admitted. “It’s supposed to drop forty degrees in about three hours.”
“Great,” my mother muttered. “Your brother’s driving in from Fort Hood. That’s exactly what I want to hear.”
I giggled. “That’s usually the way of it. How long does he get to stay?”
“A night,” Dad said as he came back out. “He’s doing something in Louisiana that he wasn’t at liberty to talk about, he says. He got permission to stop at our house for the night, and then in the morning he’ll continue with the trip to wherever in Louisiana he’s going.”
“Are we sure it’s even Louisiana?” I teased.
Dad grunted out a reply and sat back down, a frosted mug of beer in his hand.
A bike pulled into the compound, and I felt my nerves start to quiver.
Everything inside me was more than aware that the bike hadn’t been coming to the compound long. If he had, he would’ve kept right on rolling inside, instead, he had to stop at the gate and input a temporary code. The rest of us had little tags on our vehicles. When we got close, the gate would sense the tags and automatically open for us.
“He’s late,” my father muttered.
I bit my lip and looked at the time.
“It’s because of all that.” I gestured toward the boxes of pastries. “Though, I wish I would’ve been able to keep more of those muffins. And the twists.”
I’d made the mistake of walking into the center earlier where quite a few of the men had been in a meeting—my dad being one of them. Needless to say, I had only cookies left, and that had been because I’d guarded that box with my life so I could share them with my mother.
The bike pulled up to the center’s front, but with a quick look around, he came to see us instead of walking inside the center.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt,” Slate muttered, his eyes flicking to mine, then to my father’s, followed shortly by my mother’s.
“No,” Max muttered. “Take a seat for a second and let me finish my beer. We try not to take alcohol into the center. It sometimes scares the women and children. Though we don’t have any inhabitants right now.”
Slate nodded and went to the only available seat left on the porch, the one directly next to me, and took a seat.
“Anyway, Harleigh. To answer your question.” Dad opened his mouth and yawned. “I was able to find out it’s some training exercise that’s supposed to simulate a real attack on our US borders. They’re going down to the swamps of Louisiana. There’s a survivalist compound that they were able to acquire for a few weeks. They’re supposed to be blending into the surrounding towns and not scaring the shit out of people while they perform this mission. Your brother’s going in as a civilian.”
That’s when I burst out laughing.
“Dax doesn’t ‘fit in,’” I found myself saying. “Dax most certainly stands out.”
I was more than aware of Slate’s eyes on me, and I glanced at him out of the corner of my eyes.
He was studying my face.
“Why do you say your brother doesn’t fit in?” he asked curiously.
“My brother is what you would consider ‘beautiful,’” I admitted. “He’s also six foot four, weighs two hundred and forty-nine pounds, and has tattoos covering almost every inch of his arms and even one on his neck. He was almost denied entry into the Army because of them.”
“Meaning,” my father drawled, “that he’s going to stand out. He’s most certainly not going to be able to blend in.”
Slate shrugged. “I don’t know. That’s about normal nowadays. When I was in that might’ve caused a few people to go ‘hmm,’ now it’s just par for the course. It doesn’t surprise me about his almost denial, though. I had this one on my arm and they nearly said ‘hell no.’”
I looked at his arm and felt my lips twitch.
Every time I’d seen the tattoo, it’d cause my lips to twitch.
It was a sloth.
A really, really big sloth.
It started at his wrist—at least the tree that the sloth was hanging from did—and stopped somewhere underneath his t-shirt. The sloth took up the majority of his bicep as its clawed foot hung on from a tree branch.
“Not offensive, though,” my father muttered. “Which isn’t what Dax’s are.”
My lips twitched. “They’re not offensive, really.”
“You’re saying that a topless woman isn’t offensive?” my mother finally chimed in, still pissy about that tattoo.
My brother had gone one night on his seventeenth birthday to get a tattoo of a topless woman on his forearm. He’d come home, been proud as fuck about it, only to have my mother lose her shit over it.
It was hilarious, and I wish I could’ve taped it for nostalgia’s sake.
My mother, who was my height, ripping my brother, who’d been well over six feet at the time, a new asshole in front of everybody? Well, that was one for the books.
And something I’d cherish for my entire life.
“It happens, I suppose,” Slate said. “So…did you pull some strings to get him in?”
Max grinned. “I would have, but he ended up sweet talking his way in all on his own. Kid’s a charismatic little fuck when he wants to be.”
Slate snorted. “Must be nice. I’ve never had that ability. When I tried to talk my way out of shit, it always ends up digging my hole deeper.”
I turned to my mother. “Mom, you’ve met the neighbor that turned his sprinklers on me, right?”
My mother’s brows rose.
“Actually,” she said. “I have. I met him last night. But your father failed to mention the sprinkler part.”
Slate’s cheeks colored.
Let me repeat.
Slate’s cheeks. Colored.
Score!
“Your daughter also failed to mention that she was lying in his hammock, in his yard. When she had that pointed out to her, she gave him attitude,” Dad supplied helpfully.
I gasped. “Why must you take everybody’s side but mine?”
Dad’s eyes met mine.
“Baby, trust me when I say, being forced to be somewhere you don’t want to be, for a length of time that is irrationally long? It’s torture. Being home in your own environment is crucial to sanity. When he came home, he found you on his shit. What did you think was going to happen?” he asked.
I felt my stomach clench.
I hadn’t really thought about it that way, to be honest.
I just noticed that the hammock hadn’t been used—ever—and I’d had no problem in using it.
Now, thinking about how Slate had his choices taken away from him, as well as his every move dictated? Well, that made me rethink the petty games I’d been playing with the hammock this week.
Shit.
My eyes flicked to Slate, but he was busy studying something off in the distance.
I reached for another cookie to keep my mouth occupied.
“Why were you in prison?” my mother asked nonchalantly.
I nearly choked on my cookie.
“I killed my fiancée’s murderer,” he answered truthfully. “Beat the shit o
ut of him. At the time, I wasn’t really trying to kill him, per se. Just…make him hurt like he made Vanessa hurt. Turns out that the guy had an underlying medical condition that was not conducive with being beat up. I didn’t have a clue.”
“Bummer,” Mom teased. “One less asshole to be on our planet, breathing in air.”
I gasped. “Mother!”
She shrugged. “I was working the night that y’all came in.”
I felt something in my belly twitch.
“Two police officers getting shot was a big deal for our tiny town,” she said. “You were a hero.”
Slate snorted. “A hero? Yeah…a hero would’ve saved her. I just let her bleed out in the squad car.”
“I remember them saying that you held pressure on her wound, and drove her to the hospital, all the while with a gunshot wound yourself,” she countered. “One that was making you bleed out almost as fast as her.”
Slate’s face went hard.
“Almost,” he agreed.
I shoved another bite of cookie into my mouth.
I knew this was an uncomfortable subject for him, and I was torn between changing the subject and asking more questions.
Instead of doing either, I shoved my mouth full of cookies and tried to control the urge to reach for his hand and tuck it into both of mine.
A hand that would’ve engulfed both of mine easily.
“You pulled up into the ambulance bay, sirens blaring, and then passed out as soon as you got it into park,” she said. “I was clocking in when I saw you pull up. The entire emergency room exploded in activity. I had to give a statement to the police on what I saw since I was right there when you pulled up.”
Slate’s face scrunched up.
“Then you got fixed up, loaded up with blood, and you were out the door a couple hours later,” she murmured. “Walking out AMA.”
AMA was against medical advice.
Slate looked like the type to do that.
“Had some unfinished business,” he admitted.
What he’d done had been something that every single person in the world would’ve done if they were placed into that situation.
My phone rang, and I glanced at the readout from where it sat in my lap and grimaced.
“Fuck,” I muttered darkly.
“What is it?” Dad asked.
“Work,” I muttered, picking the phone up and answering it.
F-Bomb (The Bear Bottom Guardians MC Book 9) Page 7
